


Faith & Hope & Charity

by aprilbird



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Drabble, Excessive mention of spanish moss, Gen or Pre-Slash, Judgmental birds, Louisiana, Multi, Pining, Road Trips, that one rhyme about crows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25420162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aprilbird/pseuds/aprilbird
Summary: The sight of him, a sullen, sodden boy where seconds ago had stood a king, had sent Henry into hysterics and Blue into this strange silence.Reflections on signs, soulmates, and sweaters.
Relationships: Henry Cheng & Richard Gansey III & Blue Sargent, Henry Cheng/Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	Faith & Hope & Charity

**Author's Note:**

> Damp parking lots of Louisiana post offices are something that can actually be so personal.
> 
> Title from Schoolhouse Rock's Three is a Magic Number, because it's perfect for an ot3 fic and also a little bit because of that one part of Ready Player One. The book, not the movie. Both are good & bad in their own ways, though. 
> 
> Anyway!

Navy sweater, rain-damp shoulders. She first describes it to Henry in an empty parking lot somewhere in Louisiana. She is leaning back in the driver’s seat of the dream-Pig, head tipped back, knuckles white on the wheel. Not driving, not tapping, just holding tight, grasping for control. Her fingers are slender and laden with rings and he can’t look away. 

“Just now,” she says. “It reminded me, that’s all.”

Just now: Gansey had hopped out of the backseat into the muggy morning mist, envelopes in hand, and promised to  _ only be a moment _ , and the great tall moss-laden trees had tossed in the wind and showered him and the car with a spray of water from the night’s rains. The sight of him, a sullen, sodden boy where seconds ago had stood a king, had sent Henry into hysterics and Blue into this strange silence. 

Now Gansey is in the post office, and Henry is in a sort of shock.

“You knew,” he says, words failing. “But… I’m sorry. I’m sorry you had to know. I can’t imagine— ”

“The worst thing is, I never did— I never realized, all those times trudging through the woods or around Henrietta— until after. Sometimes if it was raining and he was off without me I’d worry but then I’d realize he was safe because—” She trails off and presses her mouth closed with finality, sealing the words inside. 

Henry says them instead. “Because he wasn’t with you.”

Lips still sealed, she nods. All the light in the world seems to be pooling in her eyes. 

“It’s over,” he says, as though time is linear.

“I know,” she says. “It’s not even the same sweater. It’s not like he brought it with him. It’s not like it would matter if he did.”

Both raven boys had shed their feathers. Flown the nest.

“It wasn’t his, anyway,” Henry says, realizing what he’s saying as he forms the words. “That day—”

Gansey had died wearing Henry’s sweater. 

He had owned one of his own, as they all did: the raven plumage, the coat of arms. He'd worn it just about every day and so it could have been any day, any rainstorm or sprinkler or water balloon— how many times had he inadvertently, harmlessly matched Blue’s spectre? A spectre in blue.

“That day," Henry says, "I gave him mine.”

Impossibly, Blue laughs. “Of course,” she says. “It— of course.” Later, this will comfort him, that she feels so strongly he was meant to be a part of this, a part of them. Fated from the start, or something.

“God, do you think, if I hadn’t—”

“You had to.”

“Of course I had to, the idiot didn’t bring a goddamn layer.” But that wasn’t what she had meant.

Outside, the sky is white and everything else is a rich, dark green, rolling like waves. The trees drip with moisture and Spanish moss. Through his window the humid air lazily swirls in, saturated and heavy like his heart.

Blue laughs to herself again, quieter. Her expression is still distant, but the tension has gone out of her shoulders. She leans across him to dig in the glovebox for a lip balm, and as she sifts through the hoarded napkins and poorly-folded maps and dreamt-up EpiPens, Henry stares resolutely out the passenger window and does not notice the sweet grapefruit scent of her hair. 

“Look,” he says, pointing with the quirk of an eyebrow. “Ravens.” Several of them, in the corner of the parking lot, pecking at a flattened carton of french fries.

“I think they’re crows,” Blue says, putting on the lip balm. Her mouth is parted and her lips are red. Gansey died kissing that mouth and though it appears to have been an isolated incident Henry thinks the risk might be worth it. Or it would be, if Blue’s kiss hadn’t killed Gansey, marking him as her true love. Beautiful Blue and her beautiful mouth and her beautiful soulmate. Spectres and fate. 

“A whole murder. What does,” he counts, “Seven crows mean, then? Isn’t that a thing?”

A murder. Gansey had put his life in her hands. Hadn’t Henry done the same, that day in the cellar, hand over hand, knees and elbows knocking, heartbeats echoing as he pressed death into Gansey’s palm? Not death. Life, his life, his essence given as a fragile little glittering creature. He’d known RoboBee was harmless, though Gansey hadn’t. It was about trust. Blue’s kiss had been a different kind of trust, a solemn bloody promise. She is so much stronger than him.

“One for sorrow,” Blue says, in the present moment. She taps her bottom lip with her thumb absentmindedly and his heart lurches. “Two for joy.”

The backseat door opens and with it comes the scent of mint and rain.

“Three for a girl,” Gansey smiles at her, alive and slightly damp. He looks straight at Henry as he fastens his seat belt and finishes, “Four for a boy.”

She starts the car with one hand, reaches back with the other. Henry can’t look away from the rearview mirror as Gansey squeezes it, presses gum into her palm, closes her fingers around it and kisses the knuckles. 

“Exactly. Five for silver, six for gold,” Blue grins, all tension gone, and pops the gum into her mouth. The car squeals out of the parking lot, startling the birds up into the trees. 

Behind them Gansey shrugs out of his sweater— it’s a lighter weave and it's the wrong blue, but the v-neck is the same and Henry can see how Blue thought— and lays it to dry over the stacked duffles with the care of one handling a sleeping animal. He’s in a white polo and his hair is tousled and his glasses are flecked with rain.

“I remember now,” Henry says as they merge onto the highway. He knows he could reach back for gum too, but he doesn’t. Instead he cradles RoboBee inside his sweatshirt pocket with both hands, rests his head on the window. “Seven for a secret, never to be told.”

The ravens, for they were ravens, scatter from the moss-laden trees by some silent, sudden agreement. A warm current of air carries them high, over the trees and buildings and the highway. A flow of cars races beneath them. Even though the wisps of clouds, one of the cars is distinctly orange. The seventh raven swoops low, cries out triumphantly, and shits on it.

**Author's Note:**

> I cut this from a large collection of semi-connected scenes that I am periodically taping string to. It's very short and doesn't really go anywhere but I love the three of them and to be honest I needed to publish something so I could feel productive.


End file.
